Hello everyone, we are here again with the latest weekly contest by @queercoin with the prompt:
This week's topic:
Crypto - What is your opinion about centralization and decentralization? What are the pros and cons of each one?
Centralization:
Every organization or group must have a chain of command wherein orders or authority flow from. It is either decision making is done by a sole entity or person on the one hand, or by a group of people coordinating to arrive at a decision.
Thus seen, the concept of decentralized or centralization in the blockchain sphere is not a new thing.
By centralization, it means that an authority or a person is in control of the runnings or workings of that platform. He controls the data and functions of the platform. The central authority is also responsible for storing, processing and transmitting all data.
Take for instance, some social media sites like YouTube, Facebook (Meta) and Twitter now (X). All these are centralised platforms. A person or body runs, controls and determine their the workings. responsible for storing, processing and transmitting all data.
Advantages of centralization:
Even though most people may not like centralization, there are however some benefits derivable from centralization. These include: with centralization, command chain is easily ascertainable. For a network that use centralization, a node or a collection of nodes are responsible for the verification of transactions.
Centralization also reduces cost. This appears to be one of its notable advantage. Any infrastructure or network that is centralized demands less maintenance and expense. As centralized organizations and networks are pre-planned, their expenditures do not exceed budgets unless and until network expansion is absolutely necessary.
With centralized, decision making is always quicker. Thus, it takes less communication between the various levels of authorization in centralized networks since there are fewer nodes or users.
Disadvantages: There is a truism that whatever has an advantage must also have a disadvantage. With that in mind, let's look at the advantages and disadvantage of both centralization and decentralized:
Disadvantages:
Trust issues - with centralized trust issues are concerns are always there. It is also prone to hacks, data leaks or breaches.
Again, users in a centralised blockchain are not anonymous. They are known.
Decentralization:
On the other hand, when we talk about decentralized in blockchain, it is used to describe the handover of command or delegation of authority and decision-making from a centralized entity (person, organization, or group thereof) to a dispersed network. There is therefore no central authority that controls or handles the network.
Control in essence in a Decentralized networks are usually resides with the community or the users themselves. Examples here are Bitcoin and our beloved hive.
Advantages:
With decentralized, the control stays with the user. Again, with decentralized, it is less prone to hacks and data breaches and leaks as no single point of failure. Decentralization provides a trustless environment, reduces points of weakness, improves data reconciliation and optimize the distribution of resources.
This is my participation in the QC Community Contest. You can join the contest via this link:
@queercoin/qc-community-weekly-contest-49